LAZARAT, Albania
— About 400 Albanian police officers, backed up by two army
helicopters, started to move late Wednesday into a major illegal
marijuana-growing village after gunmen there fatally shot one policeman
and wounded two others.
Local
media said gunfire was heard coming from the southern village of
Lazarat throughout the day, but an Associated Press photographer heard
no shooting in the evening.
Police
spokesman Gentian Mullai said officers had identified 21 suspects and
called on them to surrender, also asking residents and authorities to
cooperate.
"If the armed group responds by shooting, police will eliminate them," a police statement said.
Police
"are keeping under control an isolated armed group in the village,"
said Enerjeta Camani, police spokeswoman in nearby Gjirokastra.
Police
officers said they were targeting a couple of houses near the place
where their colleagues were shot early Wednesday, believing the suspects
were there.
Lazarat,
which is 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of the capital, Tirana, has
been cordoned off, with checkpoints set up for everyone going in or out,
while journalists have been kept outside the village.
Police
spokesman Ardi Bita said the shots were fired by a suspected criminal
gang from a house in Lazarat, which has about 5,000 residents.
Lazarat
came to prominence in 2014 after a five-day police siege in which
special police forces with armored personnel carriers came under intense
fire with automatic weapons and rocket launchers from local homes. The
raid destroyed 102 tons of marijuana and 530,000 marijuana plants with
an estimated market value at the time of 6.4 billion euros ($8.2
billion) — more than 60 percent of the country's annual gross domestic
product.
Wednesday's
shootout came after police stationed in the village stopped a car
transporting weapons, seizing two rifles and one automatic rifle and
arresting the driver. Police had launched an operation in the morning to
arrest suspects who had shot at but did not injure policemen stationed
in the village overnight.
Seven people have been questioned.
Prime
Minister Edi Rama, along with his interior and health ministers,
visited the injured police officers in a hospital in Tirana, where they
had been airlifted by helicopter. Both had non-life threatening
injuries.
Police identified the dead policeman as Ibrahim Basha.
"We
are in mourning ... and I believe every Albanian who values the
honesty, courage and service of the state police is in mourning too,"
Rama told journalists.
The
U.S. Embassy in Tirana also condemned the violence against police and
expressed condolences over the death of Basha, who had been deployed
with NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The
Delegation of the European Union to Albania also saluted "the courage
of the Albanian police officers who are serving their country by taking
forward the fight against drug trafficking."
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